That Rug Was Never His (Graham Platner)
The Democrats got Big Lebowski'd in Maine, and the opposition research Christmas tree hasn't even been plugged in yet
So I’m sitting here with my White Russian, right, half watching the Maine Senate race just kind of dissolve on the TV, and I’m thinking — man, I’ve seen this movie before. I have literally seen this exact movie.
Graham Platner. The oyster farmer. The vet. The gimme cap and the Bernie endorsement and the whole salt-of-the-earth thing. I didn’t want to say anything. I was trying to abide.
But here’s the thing about the Big Lebowski — not me, the other Lebowski, the one in Pasadena with the wheelchair and the “I’m a self-made man” speech — here’s the thing: everybody could see he was full of shit. Everybody except the people who needed him to be real.
The Rug, Man
The oyster farm was the rug. The thing that tied the whole image together. Rugged Mainer. Working class. Getting his hands dirty on the water. Not a politician.
Here’s what the New York Times finally got around to telling everybody: his mother concocted the plan to set him up with the farm, through a family friend who already owned one. His father — a lawyer, not a fisherman — put up around $200,000 for his house. And the farm’s primary customer, basically its only customer, is his mother’s upscale restaurant and inn.
The man sells oysters to his mom.
That’s not a farm. That’s a prop.
His grandfather designed Windows on the World. His prep school of choice was Hotchkiss, one of the fanciest boarding schools in America, before he got expelled and landed at a different prep school in Bangor. And yet he spent an entire primary campaign telling people he’s “never been close to money and power.”
Yeah, well. That’s just, like, your biography, man.
Walter Has Some Thoughts
Walter — God help us if he were here right now — Walter would be absolutely losing it.
“This is not a vetting process. This is a Senate race. There are RULES.”
And irritatingly, he’d be right.
Because before the general even starts, we’ve got: a skull tattoo with Nazi SS associations he claims he didn’t recognize. Reddit posts advising rape victims to “act like an adult for f---s sake,” blamed on PTSD. Anti-Black and anti-gay slurs, same Reddit, same PTSD. And now a sexting situation his own wife flagged to the campaign last year, which the campaign evaluated as a “political liability,” apparently decided was fine, and quietly buried.
Each one got the single-point treatment from the pundit class. He apologized. He was in a dark place. He served his country. He’s not that guy anymore.
Sure, man. People change. I’ve been in dark places. But that is a lot of dark places. You start stitching all those patches together and you’ve got yourself a quilt. A big red quilt. And that’s before the Republicans open a single box of what they’ve been saving for October. This is a Christmas tree that hasn’t been plugged in yet.
Donny, You’re Out of Your Element
Here’s what really gets me. Janet Mills — two-term governor, actual record, actual credibility — dropped out in April because her campaign ran out of money. She’s technically still on the ballot June 9th.
And the Democratic establishment, the same people who spent years telling us they were the adults in the room, rallied around the guy with the covered-up tattoo and the prop oyster farm because he gave good rally and looked like what they needed him to be. Nobody asked hard questions. The story was too good. Veteran. Farmer. Outsider. The algorithm loved it.
That’s Donny. Democrats keep doing Donny — walking into the conversation three sentences late, not knowing what anyone’s talking about, saying the wrong thing with total confidence.
“I am the walrus.”
Ignored. Every time.
The Bums Lost
Look, the Dude doesn’t traffic in told-you-so’s. That’s not the vibe.
But Susan Collins has survived four Senate cycles in a state that keeps trending bluer because she is genuinely good at the job of seeming reasonable, and beating her was always going to require a candidate who could sustain scrutiny. The Republicans don’t need to manufacture anything here. They just need to open the boxes, time the drops, and watch November go sideways.
The Democrats needed a rug that actually tied the room together. Instead they’ve got a guy who sold the last one to his mother.
The bums lost, man.
The Dude abides. But he is not thrilled about it.
That fairy-tale campaign turned into a spectacular flame-out. See also John Edwards.